How Trimming Your Website Can Boost Rankings

Hey guys,

I wanted to talk about something I don’t see getting enough attention but has (several times over) brought me a boost in results: content pruning.

Although it’s not the ‘sexiest’ part of SEO, but trust me—it’s effective and can make a massive difference, especially if you’ve got a lot of content that’s been hanging around for years.

What is Content Pruning?

Content pruning is exactly what it sounds like: going through your existing content and trimming away (or improving) the stuff that’s not performing.

You’re essentially Marie Kondo-ing your website, cutting out the old, irrelevant, and underperforming pages that aren’t helping you rank—or worse, dragging down your site as a whole.

But this isn’t just about deleting a bunch of old blog posts. It’s a strategic process where you evaluate what content is worth keeping, improving, merging, or cutting altogether.

Why Prune Your Content?

Here’s the thing: Google rewards quality over quantity. If your site is bloated with outdated, irrelevant, or duplicate content, that’s gonna hurt your SEO efforts. Every page on your site is competing for Google’s attention, and if half of those pages aren’t adding value, they’re essentially diluting the power of the good stuff.

More pages = more chances for low-quality content to harm your rankings. It’s also worth mentioning that pruning can improve your site’s crawl efficiency, meaning Googlebot can focus on indexing the content that actually matters.

How to Implement Content Pruning: Step-by-Step

Here’s a process I follow when pruning a client’s website. It’s actionable, measurable, and—most importantly—gets results.

1. Audit Your Existing Content

Start by doing a complete content audit. Tools like Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, or even Ahrefs are great for this. The goal is to identify all the pages on your site and their performance metrics (traffic, rankings, backlinks, etc.).

Look at the following:

• Pages with zero or very low traffic over the past 6-12 months.
• Content that ranks for irrelevant or low-value keywords.
• Pages with thin content (i.e., not providing enough value or depth).
• Outdated posts that are no longer accurate or useful (think old news, obsolete stats, irrelevant services).

Export everything into a spreadsheet so you can start analyzing it.

1. Categorize Your Content

Now that you have your content audit, categorize your content into three buckets:

• Keep: High-performing pages that are still relevant. These are your MVPs—you don’t touch them unless it’s to optimize further.
• Improve: Posts or pages that have some value but need a refresh. Maybe it’s outdated, maybe the keyword strategy needs adjusting, or maybe it just needs more content depth.
• Remove/Redirect: Low-value content that’s either irrelevant or actively hurting your rankings.

1. Improve & Consolidate

For the content in the “Improve” category, go through and optimize. Some ideas for improving content:

• Update statistics, examples, or case studies that are no longer accurate.
• Add more content to thin articles—longer content often performs better (but only if it’s relevant).
• Re-optimize for keywords: If a piece is ranking for a less-than-ideal keyword, adjust the content to target better, higher-value terms.
• Consolidate: If you have multiple posts on the same or similar topics, consider merging them into one comprehensive post. Use 301 redirects to point the old URLs to the new one, so you don’t lose any link juice.

1. Remove Low-Value Content

For content that’s past its prime and no longer useful, don’t be afraid to cut it. Deleting isn’t always the best option—you can 301 redirect these pages to more relevant content to preserve any backlinks or SEO value they still carry.

Pro Tip: If you have content that’s no longer relevant but you don’t want to delete it (e.g., an outdated service or product), consider deindexing it by using a noindex tag. This keeps it on your site for reference but removes it from Google’s index so it doesn’t hurt your rankings.

1. Measure the Impact

Once you’ve pruned your content, keep a close eye on your rankings, organic traffic, and crawl stats. Usually, within a few weeks or months, you’ll start seeing an improvement in keyword rankings and overall traffic. Use Google Analyticsand Search Console to track this.
Remember, content pruning is not a one-time thing. It’s a continuous process. Every six months or so, revisit your content and see if there’s anything new that needs attention.

TL;DR: Clean Up Your Content for Better SEO
If you’ve been putting off content pruning, now’s the time to do it. It’s a simple but powerful strategy to improve your site’s overall quality, ranking potential, and user experience. Start by auditing your site, categorizing your content, and deciding what to keep, improve, or remove. The results are well worth the effort.

Hope this helps!